Cathy Lesser Mansfield is the composer and librettist of The Sparks Fly Upward, and she is founder and Executive Director of The Sparks Fly Upward Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, genocide and tolerance through presentations of Sparks, and ancillary activities.

She teaches courses in consumer protection and commercial law, as well as a course called “Holocaust and the Law,” at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Cathy speaks nationally about Holocaust and the law, and about consumer protection issues. She was a Silberman Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and is a Distinguished Fellow at The Consortium for the Research and Study of Holocaust and the Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Center for National Security and Human Rights Law.

Join us at Temple Sinai in person or online for the following events with Cathy Mansfield. 

Thursday, Jan. 23, 7 PM
Nazi Laws: From Democracy to Dictatorship
Cathy will discuss the Nazi Party’s rise to power in Germany in the years preceding the Holocaust, the legislative means by which the party and its leader, Adolph Hitler, took the country from the democratic Weimar Republic to the dictatorship it became, the anti-Jewish Nazi laws at the time, and the Nazi court system.

Friday, Jan. 24, 7 PM Shabbat Evening Service
Cathy will speak about The Sparks Fly Upward, and perform several songs from the opera with Cantor David Reinwald and other talented musicians and singers.

Saturday, Jan. 25, 6 PM
Screening of The Sparks Fly Upward

Join us to watch a recording of a 2022 performance of the opera (sung in English).

Fear—Faith—Hope
Three German families…
…Two Jewish and one Christian, are thrust headlong into the Holocaust.

The Sparks Fly Upward begins on October 28, 1938 with the deportation of Polish Jews residing in Germany to Poland, and concludes with the liberation of Berlin in May 1945 and the re-dedication of the Neue Synagogue in Berlin in 1995. Learn more…